A group of prominent right-wing American analysts, supported by several Serbian academics, have claimed that the greatest terrorist threat to Europe comes from the Balkans, particularly from Bosnia and Kosovo which still maintain links to al-Qaeda. Yosef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Conventional Warfare in Washington, said that the Balkans was a “springboard for Islamic extremism” in Europe and that Iran was the main driving force behind it. According to Bodansky, Iran was among leading countries that finance and support Islamic terrorism directed against the United States and Europe. “The final goal of Islamic terrorist groups and organizations is to turn America into an Islamic republic and to secure world domination through it,”. In 1999 Bill Clinton won NATO support for a bombing campaign against Belgrade to halt the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians by Serbs in Kosovo. Evan Coleman said that “Al Qaeda still has camps for recruiting and training terrorists in Bosnia” and that it was happening before the eyes of NATO soldiers stationed there. He said that no one in the American administration paid attention to the intelligence reports.

I'm not sure I agree with Bernard Lewis here. I haven't seen anything indicating that democracy can be exported to the Middle East. The return of political Islam in Turkey, after almost a century of secular experiments, should serve as a warning:

The creation of a democratic political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East will not be easy. But it is possible, and there are increasing signs that it has already begun. At the present time there are two fears concerning the possibility of establishing a democracy in Iraq. One is the fear that it will not work, a fear expressed by many in the United States and one that is almost a dogma in Europe; the other fear, much more urgent in ruling circles in the Middle East, is that it will work. Clearly, a genuinely free society in Iraq would constitute a mortal threat to many of the governments of the region, including both Washington's enemies and some of those seen as Washington's allies. The end of World War II opened the way for democracy in the former Axis powers. The end of the Cold War brought a measure of freedom and a movement toward democracy in much of the former Soviet domains. With steadfastness and patience, it may now be possible at last to bring both justice and freedom to the long-tormented peoples of the Middle East.

Friday, April 29, 2005

A Norwegian court has sentenced a woman to nine months in jail for raping a man, the first such conviction in the Scandinavian country that prides itself for its egalitarianism. The 31-year-old man fell asleep on a sofa at a party in January last year and told the court in the western city of Bergen he woke to find the 23-year-old woman was having oral sex with him. Under Norwegian law, all sexual acts with someone who is "unconscious or for other reasons unable to oppose the act" are considered rape. The court sentenced the woman Wednesday to nine months in jail and ordered her to pay 40,000 Norwegian crowns ($6,355) in compensation. "This is a very harsh sentence," the woman's lawyer, Per Magne Kristiansen, told the Norwegian news agency NTB. The woman argued the man had been awake and consented. The prosecutor had sought a 10-month sentence and argued the court should not be more lenient with a woman than a man. It was Norway's first conviction of a woman for rape.

A WEST NYACK, N.Y. MAN was found dead at his computer apparently the victim of trying to keep up with too many professional forums. Childress H. Wanamaker, 54, an account executive at a New York-based new media company, died of starvation according to the West Nyack coroner's office. Wanamaker's emaciated body was found by Loraine, his wife of 26 years, who told MediaPost she had been bringing her husband meals on plastic trays for weeks, but that he never took the time to eat them. "He was glued to his computer 24/7," she said tearfully. "He was so afraid he was going to miss an opportunity to contribute a comment or start a discussion, that he just stopped eating." She added that Wanamaker's last words were "OK Picard, stick that in your pipe and smoke it..." Computer forensic specialists from SUNY at Cortland discovered that Wanamaker was subscribed to 48 different forums and networking communities including one apparently having to do with the elderly called "oldtimers" and another apparently limited to just 100 people. They also found that he posted a comment into one forum or another on an average of two per minute every hour of the day for the past seven weeks.

The Arab satellite-TV network Al Jazeera says that its upcoming global English-language channel will not pursue an anti-US policy and will be careful while using words such as "suicide bomber" and "martyr", its chief said. The channel, expected to go on air before the end of this year, will follow the ethical guidelines of the BBC, Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al Jazeera International, said over the weekend. "We won't be pursuing any anti-US policy in the new network and we shall be careful about the word 'terrorist'," he told an audience of more than 300 journalists and academicians at the fourth Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty. Parsons said that he would keep the editorial content objective by presenting both sides of a story."One person's suicide bomber can be another person's freedom fighter so we shall be very careful on how we select words," he said, adding that the new channel would work from the Middle Eastern perspective by seeking balanced reporting.

"[…] It is impossible not to admire the foresight of Adolph Hitler, who is presented to public opinion as 'racist, sadistic, and monstrous.' Way back then, Hitler foresaw what would happen these [present] days. He cleansed off these swindler Jews, who believe in racism for a religion and take pleasure in bathing the world in blood, because he knew that they would become [this] big a curse for the world. Hitler indeed was a man of foresight So Hitler did the job, yet Israel is presented to the world public opinion as the innocent victim. The second man with foresight is evidently Osama bin Laden. If a stone hits a dog's leg somewhere in the world, Osama bin Laden gets blamed. Bin Laden had foreseen what would happen in Iraq, in Palestine, and in the prisons of Guantanamo. He [Osama] alone, or perhaps with a few friends, defies the superpowers of the world and sets fear inside the very shelters of the oppressors. It was Hitler yesterday, and it is Osama bin Laden today"

As many as 1,250 women were killed in the name of honour in the year of 2004, according to Minister's Adviser on Women Development Nilofar Bakhtiar. "This shows the sorry state of affairs womenfolk of the country are undergoing at present. To make matters worse, murderers are roaming free here and there, which reflects the gravity of the problem," the adviser said. However, she hoped that with the passage of the honour killing bill by the parliament, the condition of women would improve considerably. Under the bill, honour killing has been declared a crime against the state with a maximum punishment of death penalty or life imprisonment. Similarly, Swara and Wani customs, under which disputes were settled by handing over women, have also been declared a punishable act with the maximum of 10 years imprisonment. About Hudood Ordinances, the adviser said the government was set to discuss these laws in detail. Besides this, women are suffering from absolute poverty, mismatch and early marriages, acid throwing, stove burning and increasing maternal mortality rates. These are the issues which do not need legislation but awareness within women about their rights, the adviser added.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Norwegian King - an Infidel Pig at Heart?

Norway's King Harald was back on the operating table on Sunday after complications arose from a recent heart operation. The king's personal physician said that it was a common procedure and that the king is doing well. Just before Easter the king underwent surgery to replace a damaged valve with a biological heart valve, as well as a bypass to replace a clogged artery.

The hospital has refused to reveal which animal was the donor for the biological heart valve. However, as FOMI News points out, the organic donors are usually pigs. If that is the case, the Norwegian King is now part pig. Although this may seem amusing, it could in theory create problems regarding Muslims in Norway. How should Muslims respond to a king that is an infidel pig at heart?

15 year old girl raped by "several men"

Three men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of seriously sexually assaulting a 15 year old girl and holding her against her will in a flat in Jordbro, south of Stockholm, on Monday night. According to Tuesday's Aftonbladet, the girl is thought to have gone to the flat voluntarily at around midnight on Monday. But police say she was then held there and allegedly raped by several men. Early on Tuesday morning the girl managed to call the police using a mobile phone and, although she did not know exactly where she was, led officers to the flat. The police broke in at 8.25 on Tuesday morning. News agency TT reported that the girl was in poor physical and psychological condition when police found her. "She is being taken care of now," said criminal inspector Hans Andersson. "This is one of the most serious cases I've seen in this category of crime," he added. So far only four people are being held in police custody but an initial search of the flat has revealed "a great deal of suspected stolen goods". Andersson said that as the investigation progresses more people could be arrested.

Use of the word immigrant as an insult can amount to proof of racial hostility, the court of appeal ruled yesterday. The court held that a charge of racially aggravated assault against a woman who attacked a GP after referring to him as "an immigrant doctor" had been wrongly thrown out by Judge Breen at Luton crown court in January. He decided that "immigrant" did not denote membership of a specific racial group under the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. But three appeal judges said he should have left the matter to the jury. The defendant, Mrs D, took her son aged three to a Bedford surgery because of a rash. Dr Hair Newal said the child could go home. When Mrs D demanded an immediate diagnosis, he suggested she find another doctor. She replied: "I can't find another doctor. All the good doctors are taken up by asylum seekers and I am left with an immigrant doctor." She then tore the letter he was writing and tried to grab her son's medical records. Dr Newal suffered scratches. Lord Justice Auld said use of the word "immigrant" could denote membership of a broad racial group. The judge was wrong to rule it simply meant "non-British". It had been for the jury to decide whether the use of the word demonstrated racial hostility.

Drinking alcohol can lead to the creation of new nerve cells in the brain, scientists in Stockholm have found. A study on mice at the Karolinska Institute showed that new cells developed in the hippocampuses of mice who were given alcohol. The mice were given alcohol corresponding to the amount drunk by a person in a normal social situation. The cells survived and developed into nerve cells. New nerve cells develop all the time in adult brains. A number of factors can stimulate them to grow, including physical exercise, stress and antidepressive drugs. Scientists are as yet unsure as to the function of the cells, although researcher Stefan Brené at the Karolinska Institute told The Local that the extra brain cells “certainly don’t make you cleverer”. “It could be that the brain is building an ‘alcohol memory’, and it could be that these cells have something to do with the development of alcohol dependency,” says Brené. Brené says that extra research is needed to find out more about the role of the cells, and to discover whether they have a role in alcoholism.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

The Collapse of European Civilization Continues

While Europe, or at least Western Europe, is on the verge of collapsing, Europeans are preparing for space exploration between 2015 - 2025. Given the current trends, we may be so mired in civil wars and conflicts on our continent by then that I doubt we can afford any missions to the moon:

Europe is grappling with three separate threats to its future. Any one of them could well prove fatal to the EU's social model. Combined, they are devastating. The first has been the sharpening of competition, with its consequent pressure on wages and on employment, which helps explain why France and Germany are grappling with double-digit unemployment. The second threat to Europe's social model is the demographic disaster. The third threat to the European social model is immigration, which is ironic, because immigration was supposed to be part of the solution to the demographic disaster. The principle of solidarity that underpins Europe's social model is under attack on several fronts. The pension crisis strains the solidarity between young and old. The competition from low-wage Poles and Czechs strains Europe's solidarity across borders. The immigration problem strains the solidarity between races and religions.

European space scientists are expected to adopt in May a broad blueprint for space exploration between 2015 and 2025, despite the fact their spending power for that period is as unknown as the deep-space phenomena they want to explore. The European Space Agency’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program lays out a series of science goals, including visits to the outer solar system, landings on near-Earth objects, space-based astronomy observatories and a search for conditions that might support life on other worlds.

Sudan's oil wealth and soaring energy prices have given President Omar Bashir a powerful ally on the U.N. Security Council -- China. China has become the key player in Sudan's oil industry, as evidenced by the metallic maze of chimneys, pipes and vents that glitters on the horizon outside Khartoum. The sparkling new oil refinery is a crown jewel for Sudan's military regime, forming a vital artery for a thriving oil industry that contributed nearly $2 billion to government coffers last year. Energy-hungry China has invested more than $15 billion in Sudanese oil through the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), a state-owned monolith. The cost of Khartoum's new refinery alone was about $700 million. Critics accuse China of being Sudan's chief international protector. "It's very clear that's what is happening," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa desk at Human Rights Watch. "China is now the largest foreign investor in Sudan, so it has an economic interest in ensuring that the Sudanese government is not penalized too harshly. It has been opposed to sanctions from Day One," she said.

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both. If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior.

Monday, April 25, 2005

The European Union's three biggest powers appear to genuinely want an agreement with Iran, which is determined to become a producer of enriched nuclear fuel, a senior Iranian official said Thursday. Sharing Washington's suspicions that Tehran is developing the capability to make atomic weapons, France, Britain and Germany have offered Iran economic and political incentives if it permanently abandons its uranium enrichment program, which could produce nuclear fuel for power plants and bombs. Iran denies wanting weapons and insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity. Iran has accused the Europeans of dragging their feet in the talks and some European diplomats have admitted privately this was a strategy on their part to keep Tehran talking.

Sweden’s strongman ponders premature exit

Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson may not go forward as Social Democratic leader before the party conference in October. Persson, who has seen his party lose ground in polls to the right-wing opposition in recent months, said he was deliberating whether to step down as party chairman in the fall. ‘I shall make up my mind when we come to the party congress,’ he told reporters. Persson, who has a reputation as a charismatic, tough-minded strongman in Swedish politics, has faced increased criticism for his government’s handling of the Asian tsunami disaster, which affected thousands of Swedish tourists, and for failing to fight back unemployment. Since he became prime minister in 1996, Persson has struggled to rein in government spending and deal with a large national debt while improving the country’s welfare system and reducing unemployment. While some political commentators hurried to point out candidates to replace him, others stated that Persson’s comments were only a part of a scheme to regain control over his party and silence his critics.

Göran Persson is set to spend Easter weekend wallowing in a torrent of bad opinion poll news. In addition to another opinion poll showing that the centre-right opposition has overtaken the government. In addition, half of trade union members and a majority of voters think that he should resign before the 2006 election. In a poll by Skop, 49.2 percent of those questioned said that they would vote for one of the four right-wing parties, whereas 48.2 percent favoured the Social Democrats and their allies. The big winner was Lars Leijonborg’s Liberal Party, which saw its share of support rise by almost three points to 16.4 percent.

The Danish People's Party has accused state broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR) for favouring Islam in Friday's Great Prayer Day TV and radio broadcasts. DR had aired a Muslim Friday prayer service as a part of is observance the national religious holiday. 'Great Prayer Day is traditional Christian holy day where churches call Danes to prayer services. But on Great Prayer Day, it isn't the Danish people's faith that is most important for DR. They favourise Islam there,' said Søren Krarup, immigrant issues spokesman for the Danish People's Party. DR rejected Krarup's claim that the organisation favoured Islam to Christianity. Leif Lønsmann, the head of the corporation's radio service, pointed out that the Great Prayer Day broadcast was the only time during the year that DR has live coverage of Muslim prayer services. Lønsmann said that despite the wave of complaints from listeners over their decision to air the prayer services, he felt that it served the station's public service obligation. 'There's an apparently a rising intolerance over our allowing Muslims modest access to the airwaves. I feel that it is a good service for the faithful and a good public service for us, who don't believe,' said Lønsmann.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

An Afghan woman has been stoned to death for adultery, police said today, the first such incident in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power.Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court's decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said."She has been stoned to death," provincial police chief, General Shah Jahan Noori, confirmed to Reuters, adding a team has been sent to the area to investigate the incident further.Adultery is forbidden in the Muslim country and under Islamic sharia law the penalty can range from flogging to stoning to death. Several women and men were given such punishments in Badakhshan, a remote north-eastern province, during the government of the Mujahideen (holy warriors) in the 1990s.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

On March 27, the total number of withdrawals from the Communist Party, Youth League and Young Pioneers exceeded half a million. In less than one month, another half a million have now withdrawn from the CCP. By April 21, the total number of people who have declared their withdrawals from the CCP, China Youth League and Young Pioneers on the Epoch Times website (http://tuidang.dajiyuan.com/) had exceeded one million. To publicly demonstrate their support for the one million Chinese who have withdrawn from the CCP, over 150 Chinese groups from around the globe will join a “March for Democracy and Freedom” in New York City on April 23. Over 3,000 are expected to join this march. There will be similar activities in Asia (Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan), North America, Europe, and Australia (Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane). The news of over one million withdrawals has spread to China. The educated people from Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Anhui, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Hubei, Gansu, Ningxia, Guangxi and Guizhou, one after another, started to accept open interviews to support over one million withdrawals.

Reporters Without Borders is calling on Internet-users to vote online for award-winners from among 60 blogs defending freedom of expression. There are six categories: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Iran and International.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Oxyrhynchus, situated on a tributary of the Nile 100 miles south of Cairo, was a prosperous regional capital and the third city of Egypt, with 35,000 people. It was populated mainly by Greek immigrants, who left behind tons of papyri upon which slaves trained in Greek had documented the community's arts and goings-on. A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail. The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels. Material ranges from the third to the seventh centuries B.C. and includes work by classical writers such as Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. But many of the manuscripts have decayed and blackened over time. "The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, the classical world as a whole."

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has said that he would never allow foreign inspectors to examine the country's nuclear facilities. He said that all questions of the IAEA or foreign scientists examining Pakistan's nuclear facilities and interrogating nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan only laid credence to the fact that Pakistan could not be trusted. "That is tantamount to admitting that we cannot be trusted in our own house. Our nuclear programme is for the protection of the people of Pakistan," The Nation quoted him as saying. He further said that Dr Khan was a national hero and the issue relating to his interrogation and questioning by foreign scientists was very sensitive.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

A 23-year-old woman has changed her story after biological evidence on a man's underpants and penis demonstrated their physical contact. The woman no longer denies laying a finger on him but insists she has committed no crime. The 23-year-old woman told Bergen municipal court that she didn't force sexual contact on the man while he was asleep, newspaper VG reports. "He wasn't asleep, he was awake the whole time and he gave me a smile," the woman told the court. The incident allegedly occurred in the apartment of the woman's current partner. He was present at the time but the woman said he did not see what happened. Prosecutor Jarle Golten Smørdal said that he is only aware of one previous conviction of a woman for rape, and that case involved the accused and two men assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

Muslims support Queen’s Islam statement

The Queen said in a new biography that Islam poses a challenge both globally and locally, and that challenge should be taken seriously. Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, vice chairman of a Copenhagen Islamic-Christian study centre, said he agreed that his religion needed a response in Denmark. ‘The Queen’s statement is correct,’ he told daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. ‘We should challenge one another on religious grounds. There is no better way to achieve tolerance than by meeting one another.’ ‘In all religious communities we see frightening actions from fanatics. In the United States, an ultra-radical right-wing Christian has just been sentenced to life in prison for bombing abortion clinics. In Israel, Zionist extremists try to use violence to force their way onto the Temple Mountain in Jerusalem to blow it sky high. And we have Muslims who fly airplanes into skyscrapers.’

The government wants Muslim clergymen to use their influence to help troubled youths get on the right path. At a meeting with seven prominent imams at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen, Liberal Integration Minister Rikke Hvilshøj advocated education as the means to a better life for Muslim youths. New proposals or agreements were not discussed at Monday’s conference, but several of the imams in attendance expressed satisfaction with the meeting. Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban decided to use the meeting as a point of departure for his upcoming Friday prayer.

A Somali family in the town of Langeskov on the island of Funen has suffered a long-time persecution. The family fled their home after having their windows and mailbox broken, and being repeatedly threatened by bat-wielding youths. The bats were decorated with swastikas and racial slogans. Two of the suspects are only 15 years old. The attacks against the Somali family have caused an outrage in Langeskov, where local organizations have scheduled a march to protest racism in the town.

An examination of Sweden's preparedness for a terrorist attack has found the country’s state agencies lacking. The Swedish Defense Research Agency, FOI, released the dismal report today. Since the September 11 attack in the US, Sweden's own commission made recommendations for a crisis setup in 2003. FOI report author Magnus Norell told Swedish radio the agencies lack resources in several possible scenarios: "We simply need more trained personnel who are equipped to handle heavily armed terrorists in case of a large attack where dozens or perhaps hundreds of people are taken hostage, where there have been many deaths or in case of several simultaneous attacks."Norell stresses that Sweden doesn't appear to be at high risk for a terrorist attack, but likens a crisis plan to home insurance. "It's better to talk about these things in peacetime, or before a crisis hits.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Turkey fears that the 90th anniversary of the start of the violence, which Armenians and their supporters plan to mark on April 24, will cause widespread anti-Turkish feeling. It is also concerned that the issue could interfere with its plans to start talks with the European Union in October for possible membership. There have been growing calls from other countries for Turkey to acknowledge its role with regard to the Armenians. Turkey flatly denies that there was any systematic effort at killing or forcing the Armenians out of eastern Anatolia, where the Armenians were trying to establish a separate state. with support from the French, British and Russians. Turkey contends that, instead, hundreds of thousands of Turks were killed by Armenians as they tried to establish themselves as the majority population in that region. Prof. Yusuf Sarinay said

A Norwegian Christian evangelist preacher living in Sweden, perhaps most known for his marriage to Swedish local celebrity singer Carola, has now been hanged out in the tabloid Aftonbladet, for his on tape for sale comments about Muhammad. All headlines screamed:

“Runar goes to attack against Islam. -Muhammad was a confused pedophile.”

[...]"Statement about Mohamed has put the country’s Muslims in rage.Hundreds of furious Muslims yesterday called Aftonbladet –many with direct murder threats aimed towards Runar Sögaard. -We all know what happened with Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands. This will Runar regret says a 33 year old Muslim in Örebro county.[...]

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

I'm totally against banning this book, as these same anti-racism laws will be used to shut down Islam-critics like me later. It is good that this book is talked about. Racism shouldn't be banned, only open calls for violence:

A book that's quietly being distributed within Norway's Muslim community refers to Norwegians as the sons of Satan. The book, written by an anonymous author, has been turned over to police by Oslo's Anti-Racism Center. Nadeem Butt leads Norway's Anti-Racism Center. Now he's defending Norwegians against a book written by a Muslim. Azhar joined other Muslim politicians and the Anti-Racism Center's efforts to get the book labelled as illegal, on the grounds it violates Norwegian law against racist expression. A Norwegian lawyer who specializes in free speech issues said the book, called "Satan's son," appears to teeter on the edge of legality. Turning it in to the police, however, isn't a good idea, says lawyer Kyrre Eggen. The book, written in Urdu, was published by a group called the All Pakistan Muslim Society. The group isn't registered in Norway. The author calls Norwegians "barbarians" and "poisonous snakes" who have poisoned humanity. "These white men have set off a devilish spiral in the whole world... to plague people," according to the book.

Europe is now home to a human flood of North African immigrants who reject integration, don't speak the local language and flock to mosques to soak up radical imams preaching jihad. Violent crime against Jews and young women has skyrocketed; native Europeans are emigrating in record numbers; and churches, synagogues and cemeteries are regularly defaced. Through the EAD, Europe has imported all the problems of failed states, while the Arab side of the table basically gives the Euros a pat on the head for being so tolerant and multicultural. Under the guise of "interfaith dialogue," the Vatican, regretfully, has been a willing partner in European submission. Day by day for 30 years, the E.U. has ceded tiny bits of its sovereignty and cultural identity, transforming the heart of the West into a subservient province of the global caliphate. Just as that other tiny minority of extremists did in the 1930s, Islamists have assumed dominance in Europe. It's hard to say whether the European elites are merely flinching doilies or active collaborators. But it hardly matters. I'm sure they won't be whining about preemption and unilateralism when it's time to dial America for help again.

Over a hundred of Sweden's best-known pop artists have signed an open letter protesting against the illegal downloading of their music. "We do not want to be robbed," they said in the letter, which was distributed by the Swedish branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). "Downloading music, films, books and computer programmes without paying for them is on the verge of becoming politically correct," they said. The letter argued that "artistic work" should be treated in the same way as any other product to be sold, and pointed out that in no other area is the right of ownership questioned. "We accept that it is the owner's name on the door of the flat where he lives. We don't think it is strange that the grocer earns money from the sausage which is sold in the store. But when the work is creative it is considered that we who created it should accept having it taken by others without getting anything in return."

The main global humanist organisation and a group of former Muslims on Monday accused European countries of ignoring violations of human rights in their Islamic communities to preserve "multi-culturalism". "Western society tends to turn a blind eye to the plight of European Muslim women and girls because 'Muslim culture is different'," Roy Brown, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), told the 53-member Commission. "Yet in Europe many women find themselves subject to domestic violence, undergo forced marriages or are even killed by family members because of some belief that they have tarnished the family honour," Brown declared. That view was echoed later by three ex-Muslims and self-described atheists -- Somali-born Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Iranian exile rights activist Azam Kamguian and historian of Islam Ibn Warraq. Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, told the news conference she condemned "the moral relativism in Europe whereby women from Third World countries do not enjoy the same freedoms as native European women enjoy."

Monday, April 18, 2005

No amount of evidence can shake Norway's idea that it is the world's wealthiest country. In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list. In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. If the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise.

If it wins the elections, the British Labour cabinet would consider retreating from plans to hold a referendum on the EU constitution should the French reject the treaty in May. Foreign Minister Jack Straw admitted on a TV programme over the weekend that he did not know if the referendum would be held in 2006 as planned, if a negative outcome results in France, according to UK media. He said the decision on what to do next would have to be put to a meeting of EU heads of state, adding that concerning the popular poll in the UK, "It all depends ... I've no idea what is going to happen".

Turkey has been employing thousands of Islamic fundamentalists in violation of its secular constitution. An opposition parliamentary faction has accused Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of enabling the employment of thousands of Muslims who oppose Turkey as a secular state. The faction said the Islamic fundamentalists have entered all areas of government, including the Education Ministry. "We can say that thousands of anti-secularists have been employed by the state in accordance with the government's wishes," Ali Topuz, deputy chief of the opposition Republican People's Party, said. At a news conference on April 11, Topuz cited Omer Dincer, the undersecretary of the Prime Minister's office. Topuz said Dincer has called for the toppling of the secular Turkish republic.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Almost six years after the Kosovo war, hundreds of displaced Roma still live in what they were told would be temporary camps near the Trepca lead mines of Kosovska Mitrovica. Growing evidence shows they are being poisoned by toxic waste from the mines. So far, nobody within the complicated bureaucracies of the UN-administered province appears to be taking responsibility for the situation. RFE/RL correspondents Ron Synovitz and Arbana Vidishiqi report on a crisis with complications that span the boundaries of Kosovo's segregated ethnic Serbian and Albanian communities.

China's foreign minister on Sunday rejected Tokyo's demand for an apology for damage to Japanese diplomatic missions in violent protests, telling his Japanese counterpart that Beijing had done nothing for which it had to apologize to Japan's people. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing instead complained that Japan has "hurt the feelings" of Chinese on a series of issues, including relations with rival Taiwan and "the subject of history" — a reference to new Japanese textbooks that critics say minimize Japan's wartime offenses. "The Chinese government has never done anything for which it has to apologize to the Japanese people," Li told Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

A survey has indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people want to emigrate abroad and that just 51 percent are proud of the Netherlands. The survey by Amsterdam-based research bureau Signicom also found that 33 percent of Dutch nationals think that China will have greater power than the US and Europe combined in 10 years time. Some 443 people participated in the random sample survey, which also applied new techniques in which respondents were able to spontaneously give their reactions to certain subjects. This time the subject was the Netherlands and China.

European countries are contemplating a new strategy for dialogue with the Muslim world that would see the focus shifting to popular Islamic parties and NGOs, Germany's first-ever commissioner for dialogue with the Islamic World said on Friday, April 15. In statements after a closed-door Berlin conference organized by the German and British foreign ministries, Ambassador Gunter Mulack said the Europeans should take the dialogue down to the grassroots, reported Egypt’s daily Al-Ahram on Saturday, April 16. He added that the Europeans would seek to be in close touch with the Arab and Muslim peoples and NGOs with a special focus on younger generations. Mulack said Europe, and particularly Germany, will pay due attention to popular Islamic parties, which eschew violence and engage in politics. The Berlin conference brought together diplomats, media people, professors, and representatives to EU, Scandinavian and Muslim countries.

Friday, April 15, 2005

According to some political polls the growing support for the left-wing Labor and Socialist Left (SV) parties could mean they could forge a majority alternative government without the support of the 'green', agrarian, Center Party. According to a new survey by Intéra Research Lab for newspaper Vårt Land, Labor and SV would have won a parliamentary majority for the second month in a row in their poll. Labor now achieved 29.9 percent support while SV had 20.5 percent. Both parties gained in popularity, as did potential ally the Center Party. Vårt Land observed that not only is SV now the country's second largest party on the IRL poll, it also scored record high potential, with fully 32.6 percent saying they would or could vote for SV. The big loser on the IRL poll was the populist Progress Party which retreated 4.5 percent points to 17.4 percent. They still remain ahead of the governing Conservatives, who had 16.6 percent.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

"No Sex Please - We're Japanese"

Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteersIt is not that they cannot have children; it is just that they have never had sex. The 200 women a year who seek help at a clinic in the Tokyo suburbs have not had sex with their husbands in up to 20 years, and some never, according to Kim Myong-gan, who runs the clinic. Mr Kim's short-term solution is unconventional. After an initial 20,000 yen (£100) counselling session, he produces photographs of 45 men, mostly professionals in their 40s, with whom the women are invited to go on dates and then, in almost all cases, arrange regular assignations in hotel rooms. "The men volunteer and pay half the hotel and restaurant bills, so legally there is absolutely nothing wrong with it," he said. A survey of 600 women found that 26% had not had sex with their husbands in the past year. "We are sort of room-mates rather than a married couple," one 31-year-old man, who had not had sex with his wife for two years, told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "The men love their companies; they live for work," Mr Kim said. "Men don't even think it is a problem if they don't have sex with their wives. They have pornography and the sex industry to take care of their needs, but their wives have nowhere to go. They just suffer in silence."

Having ruled out an old-fashioned Japanese husband, many women here think the solution is a Western man. Indeed, some seem so enthralled with the idea that they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to inspect the wares personally. Of the more than 2,000 women on the books at one large matchmaking agency, about 200 travel to the US or Europe each month to meet prospects.

The Chinese government is succeeding in broadly censoring what its citizens can read on the Internet, surprising many experts and denting U.S. government hopes that online access would be a quick catalyst for democratic political reform. "The Chinese are successfully developing a market economy at the same time they are continuing to accomplish control over the Internet and the media," said C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which monitors and promotes economic progress in China. "The Internet is wildly misunderstood," said Rafal Rohozinski, director of the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge, who participated in the study. "It is built around very specific chokepoints" that can be controlled. Chinese authorities perform these tasks largely using U.S. hardware and software. Companies such as Cisco and Google Inc. have been accused of aiding China's censorship by tailoring their products to suit the government's needs. The study did not confirm those allegations, which the companies have denied. Some reports on Chinese censorship also claim that the country has as many as 30,000 "Internet police" dedicated to the task.

Denmark: Queen calls on Danes to meet Islamic challenge

Denmark's Queen Margrethe has told a biographer that Islam is challenge that Danes will have to meet. In a new royal biography, the Queen told reporter Annelise Bistrup that it is both inspiring and frightening when people embrace a religion as completely as many Islamists do. "This is a challenge that has to be met, and which we have not met so far either because we have been too lazy or because we are too tolerant," the Queen said in the book. "When we are tolerant, we need to consider whether this is because we believe that something is right or because it is convenient," the Queen said, adding that "there are some things that should not be tolerated even if it is not politically correct to say so." The Queen's biography will be published on Saturday to mark the Queen’s 65th birthday.

Spain has indicted eleven Pakistanis on charges of planning attacks in Barcelona and aiming to establish a terrorist cell in Spain and in Denmark or Norway. The indictment said the Pakistanis' leader travelled to Dubai last year to meet a prominent member of al-Qaeda. At the alleged meeting, he was told to maintain a terrorist cell operative in Spain and in Norway or Denmark with the aim of financing al-Qaeda and preparing terrorist attacks. According to the indictment, the Pakistanis formed a group in Barcelona "to provide aid for the worldwide 'jihad' from Spanish soil with the objective of contributing financially to concrete terrorist actions or to those who carried them out."

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

A Jamaican-born militant Islamic preacher has been giving 'jihad' or holy war a new meaning, by reportedly urging impoverished Muslims to take matters into their own hands and wage war on infidel institutions such as banks - by robbing them. "Are you poor? Don't cry about it, but wage jihad, also by holding up banks," London-based Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, a well-known supporter of al-Qaeda, urged the faithful in a sermon. "Let's speak about jihad and how to obtain the spoils. Many Muslims complain about not having the financial means to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca," said al-Faysal. "Many are also sad because the women they want to marry rejects them because they are not wealthy enough," he added. "Do you, like many, cry because you are poor? If so, wage jihad! Look at all the money stashed away in Swiss banks. There's bank in Brunei where King Fahd has deposited 30 million dollars," al-Faysal continued. "If you are suffering from poverty, wage jihad and see the money pour into your hands," he exhorted. Al-Faysal, who studied Sharia law in Saudi Arabia, has preached a number of sermons considered to have incited Muslim hatred towards Jews and Christians.

Indiana: Group raises students' awareness of Islam

This seems to be something of a trend in US campuses. I reported a couple of weeks ago about groups of American Sociology students attending an Understanding Islam forum. Of course, debating an issue is never a bad thing. If you have a genuine debate, that is. Unfortunately, it looks like several of these forums are all about Dawah, Islamic missionary work, not about anything we consider geuine dialog. Notice how they talk about "spreading the message of Islam" and "irresponsible material presented in mass media" about Islam. You mean, writing about Saudis spreading extremism in the US?

The vice president of the Muslim Students Association is just hoping for peace. "Knowledge leads to understanding, understanding leads to tolerance and tolerance leads to peace," said Hany Gabal, a senior in the College of Health Sciences. The association is presenting Islamic Awareness Week from Monday to Thursday and the goal is to promote the understanding of Islam. The group is also presenting daily programs, such as evening lectures and videos. "This video is about a British man who converted to Islam, and he discusses the proven existence of a creator and the meaning of life," Gabal said. "We spread the message of Islam and clear up any misconceptions that have formed due to existing political issues and the often irresponsible material presented in mass media," Mohammad said.

The Bush administration helps the cause of Islamic terrorism by failing to engage in serious dialogue with the international community, author Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday. Rushdie -- infamous for living for years under threat of death after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 pronouncement that his novel The Satanic Verses was blasphemous -- said he believes US isolationism has turned not just its enemies against America, but its allies too. "What I think plays into Islamic terrorism is ... the curious ability of the current administration to unite people against it," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview. Rushdie said he found it striking how the "colossal sympathy" the world felt for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been squandered so quickly. The novelist, born in India and raised in Britain, attributed the shift in sentiment toward the United States to the Bush administration's "unilateralist policies" and its "unwillingness to engage with the rest of the world in a serious way." "This go-it-alone attitude gets people's backs up," he said of President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Shocking Rise in Violence Against Swedish Women

Strangely enough, there is no connection made in this article by the New York Times between the huge influx of Muslim immigrants and the steep rise in violence. As I've shown in my posts before, circumstantial evidence indicates a strong correlation between the two. I notice that the NYT agrees with my conclusions that the numbers cannot be explained away as merely a greater willingness by women to report the incidents. Which is exactly what the police in Sweden's third largest city claimed about an appalling number of rape charges. They're lying, and they know it. The same thing happens in Oslo, Norway, where the authorities are covering up the statistics and sacrificing their own young women to keep the peace. Predictably, leading Swedish feminists like Gudrun Schyman continue their quest to demonize all men, instead of focusing on Muslims. No wonder I consider myself an ex-feminist:

Amnesty International concluded that acts of violence against women had spiraled upward in Sweden in the last 15 years, a jump that could not be explained away as merely a greater willingness by women to report the incidents. The number of police reports filed for assault against women increased 40 percent in the 1990's, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. By 2003 the number of reported assaults had swelled to 22,400, from 14,000 in 1990. An estimated 16 women are killed by a husband or partner each year, the report said. And only a fraction of the cases involving assaults, rape, breaches of restraining orders or continuing abuse lead to prosecution, the report stated. The report also underscored that most incidents of violence against women continue to go unreported. "It's not a question of a group of criminals," said Ms. Schyman, who is leading the campaign for the feminist party. "It's not alcoholics and drug users, and it's not people that are put out from the society. It's every man and in every class of society."

Stunned journalists at Reuters have read an e-mail from the news provider’s global managing editor saying that their flagship news service “lacks insight” and is part of a wider output problem of ‘terrible quality.’ The memo from David Schlesinger, whose comments were intended for a small group of senior colleagues, leaked to the agency’s 16,000 employees after a technical fault. Having realised the e-mail was sent to the entire workforce, Schlesinger issued a second e-mail explaining the gaffe and instead asked for views on how content could “reshape itself.” He told employees that the memo was designed to stimulate discussion among the editor-in-chief’s senior management team, so they could discuss the role of Reuters in 2010. In an e-mail entitled “the burning platform in content,” Mr Schlesinger stated: “Our news is perceived as not having insight; our data is perceived as having terrible quality.”

Half of the women in the Arab world are illiterate and more than 10 million children in region don't go to school, according to a report released Monday. The report on the status of children and women, produced by the Arab League and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said many Arab countries have made progress on child rights and protection, but that more still needs to be done. "More than 10 million children in the Arab world are out of school, most of them in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Sudan," said the report, although it gave no figures for the total number of school-age children in the region. It said although many countries have established a basis for a child's right to education, they still fall short of the UN's millennium development goals for primary education, especially for girls.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Confessions of an Ex-Feminist

I got many comments to my posts about Muslim rapes and gang rapes of Swedish and Norwegian women. Several of my readers asked what Scandinavian men are doing about this. What happened to those Vikings, anyway? Did they drink too much mead in Valhalla? Despite the romantic mystique surrounding them today, the Vikings were for the most part savage barbarians. However, I doubt they would have looked the other way while their daughters were gang raped by Muslims. In some ways, this makes present-day Scandinavians worse barbarians than the Vikings ever were.

Why doesn’t the male protection instinct towards their women show itself? Some of this is simply because many people are not aware of how grim the rape statistics are. As I noted in my post, the numbers showing a high percentage of immigrants have been suppressed, probably with at least tacit support at the government level, because it would destroy the multicultural illusion. However, I think the most important reason has to do with the extreme anti-masculine strand of feminism that has been pervasive in Scandinavia for decades. The male protection instinct doesn’t take action because Scandinavian women have worked tirelessly to eradicate it, together with everything else that smacks of traditional masculinity. Because of this, feminism has greatly weakened Scandinavia, and perhaps Western civilization as whole.

The only major political party in Norway that has voiced any opposition to the madness of Muslim immigration is the rightwing Progress Party. This is a party which receives about two thirds or even 70% male votes. On the opposite end of the scale we have the Socialist Left party, with two thirds or 70% female votes. The parties most critical of the current immigration are typically male parties, while those who praise the multicultural society are dominated by feminists. I have heard that the Danish People’s Party, which has been instrumental in pushing for stricter immigration rules in Denmark, has a similar strong majority of male votes. And across the Atlantic, if only American women voted, the US President during 9/11 would be called Al Gore, not George Bush. The standard reply in my country for this gender gap in voting patterns is that men are more “xenophobic and selfish” than women, who are more open-minded and possess a greater ability to show solidarity with outsiders. That’s one possibility. Another one is that men traditionally have had the responsibility for protecting the “tribe” and spotting an enemy. Women are more naïve. Didn’t feminists always claim that the world would be a better place with women in the driver’s seat, because you wouldn’t sacrifice your own children? Well, isn’t that exactly what you are doing now? Smiling and voting for parties that keep the doors open to Muslim immigration, the same Muslims who will be gang raping your daughters tomorrow?

Judging from the rhetoric of many feminists, all the oppression in the world comes from Western men, who are oppressing both women and non-Western men. Muslim immigrants are “fellow victims” of this bias. At best, they may be patriarchal pigs, but no worse than Western men. Many Western Universities have courses filled with hate against men that would be unthinkable the other way around. That’s why Swedish feminists don’t call for Swedish men to show a more traditional masculinity and protect them against aggression from Muslim men. They denounce Swedish men for being “just like the Taliban”, want them to pay special taxes and work to establish a purely feminist party to promote even more socialist feminism. Most Norwegian feminists don’t say a word about the grotesque Muslim gang rapes. On the contrary, they work to increase Muslim immigration. Totalitarian feminists are threatening to shut down private companies that refuse to recruit at least 40 percent women to their boards by 2007.

In Sydney Australia, two Pakistan-born Muslims were found guilty of gang rapes of two teenage girls. Muslim men have been roaming Sydney gang, raping non-Muslim women, calling them "Aussie pigs" and "sluts" who ask for it. But feminist reaction was not praise; it was hostility. They were outraged over the “racism” of the strict punishments given to the Muslims rapists. Feminists pounced on the issue of rape not because they cared about rape victims, but because it allowed them to spread class warfare. Spreading scare tactics about rape allowed them to make women feel like “victims.” Victimhood is a precondition for socialism. Despite what Shirin Ebadi says, the problem for women in the Middle East is not “the patriarchy,” it is Islam. Muslims are literally given a free pass to do whatever they want – including raping women.

If all the oppression comes from Western men, it becomes logical to try weakening them as much as possible. If you do, a paradise of peace and gender equality awaits us at the other side of the rainbow. Well congratulations to Scandinavian women. You’ve succeeded in harassing and ridiculing your own sons into suppressing many of their masculine instincts. To your surprise, you didn’t enter a feminist Nirvana, but paved the way for an unfolding Islamic hell. It is correct as feminists claim, that a hyper-feminine society is not as destructive as a hyper-masculine society. The catch with a too soft society is that it is unsustainable. It will get squashed as soon as it is confronted by more traditional, aggressive ones. Instead of “having it all”, Western women risk losing everything. What are liberal feminists going to do when faced with aggressive gang of Muslim youngsters? Burn their bras and throw the pocket edition of the Vagina Monologues at them?

Feminists have destroyed the willingness of males in the chattering classes to talk seriously about the military as anything other than a manifestation of the fact that all males are bloodthirsty rapists, and if women had their way there would be no more wars. Mr. McCanles is sadly correct. The feminist world-view, which includes an over-the-top hatred of men and of all things male, is malignantly deviant from reality. In what has become the commonplace Alice-in-the-Looking-Glass metaphysic of American feminism, "masculine" does not mean assertive or strong, or capable. In their lexicon, masculine equals evil. And not just bad, either; men are also stupid, inept, and lost without a woman to somehow alchemize their base nature. Further, with women leading the way to utopia there would be an end to war because women are essentially peaceful and choose to work cooperatively rather than arrange themselves in a patriarchal hierarchy.

Muslims rapes in the West are a symptom of the breakdown of the Feminist Utopia. Women's freedoms need to be enforced, or they are meaningless. Even though women can take steps to protect themselves, the primary responsibility for protection will always belong to men. Women will only have as much freedom as their men are willing and capable of guaranteeing them. It is a major flaw in many feminist theories that they fail to appreciate this fact. Perhaps you can succeed in turning your men into doormats, but it will be on the cost of doing so to your nation and to your civilization as well. Male energy is a driving force of any dynamic culture.

Feminists claim that the reason why women haven’t been as numerous in politics and science as men is due to male oppression of women. Some of this is true. But it is not the whole story. Being male is having to prove something, to achieve something, in a greater way than it is for women. In addition to this, the responsibility for child rearing will always fall heavier on women than men. A modern society may lessen these restraints, but it will never remove them completely. For these practical reasons, it is unlikely that women will ever be as numerous as men in politics or in the highest level in business. Grow up, deal with it and move on.

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers gave a speech in January speculating that innate differences between the sexes may have something to do with the fact that proportionately fewer women than men hold top positions in science. Even if you're not up on the scientific research – a paper Mr. Summers cited demonstrating that, while women overall are just as smart as men, significantly fewer women than men occupy the very highest intelligence brackets that produce scientific genius – common sense tells you that Mr. Summers has got to be right. Recently, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a vote of no confidence in Mr. Summers. Wouldn't it be preferable to talk openly about men's and women's strengths and weaknesses? The lesson that Larry Summers has taught us is that our academic and intellectual establishment is in the grip of a poisonous feminist ideology that will not tolerate open and rational discussion or genuine inquiry.

The latest wave of feminism has severely wounded the family structure of the Western world. It is impossible to raise the birth rates to replacement level before women are valued for raising children. And before men and women are willing to marry in the first place. There is nothing wrong with being single, but it should never be promoted as the ideal. Human beings are social creatures, not solitary ones. We are created to live with partners. Marriage is not a “conspiracy to oppress women”, it’s the reason why we’re here. And it’s not a religious thing, either. According to strict, atheist Darwinism, the purpose of life is to reproduce. Given the high divorce rates and the financial losses men usually suffer after the breakdown of a relationship, quite a few Western men now hesitate to get married at all. As one man put it: "I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house." Feminism has made marriage a risky enterprise for men, but also made it easier to have affairs without commitment.

Although feminism may have strayed away into extremism, that does not mean that all of its ideas are wrong. The women’s movement will make lasting changes. At a time when women make up the majority of University graduates in many Western nations, even the most hardened male chauvinist pig will find it difficult to argue that women are unfit for academic studies. Women have occupied positions considered unthinkable only a few decades ago. Some things are irreversible. I can still see things that make me feel like a feminist, such as the Indian movie A nation without women. According to an estimate, there are around 50 million women missing from the population of India due to gender discrimination. The sometimes funny, but first of all dark movie explores the impact of absence of women on men. It underlines how the absence of women inexorably leads to the debasement of men.

Most men know, deep down, that women are indeed superior to us in certain ways. Women pretty much run our private lives. Men need women more they need us, and our lives revolve around women the way the earth rotates around the sun. The sun can manage without the earth, but the earth cannot do without the sun. Perhaps that’s why we sometimes fear them so much. Marriage used to be a trade: Female nurturing and support for male financial and social security. In a modern world, women may not need men’s financial support quite as much as they did before, while men need women’s emotional support just as much as we have always done. The balance of power has changed in favor of women. This does not have to be bad. Women still want a partner. But it requires men to be more focused on doing their best. This apparent contradiction between female dominance on the micro level and male dominance on the macro level cannot be easily explained within the context of a "weaker/stronger sex". I will postulate that being male first of all is some kind of nervous energy, something you need to prove. This will have both positive results and negative ones. Male numerical dominance in science and politics, as well as in jail and war, is linked to this. Women do not have this urge to prove themselves as much as men do. In some ways, this is a strength. Hence I think the terms "The Restless Sex" for men and "The Self-Contained Sex" for women are more appropriate and explain the differences better.

Daniel Pipes keeps saying that the answer to radical Islam is moderate Islam. There may not be any such thing as a moderate Islam, but there just might be a moderate feminism. And a mature masculinity to match it. Even a more moderate version of feminism could prove lethal to Islam. Islam survives on the extreme subjugation of women the same way humans breathe oxygen. Deprived of this, it will suffocate and die. It is true that the West still hasn’t found the formula for the perfect balance between men and women in the 21st century, but at least we are working on the issue. Islam is stuck in the 7th century. Some men lament the loss of a sense of masculinity in a modern world. Perhaps a meaningful one could be to make sure that our sisters and daughters grow up in a world where they have the right to education and a free life, and protect them against Islamic barbarism. Are we up to the challenge? Or are the only men left in the West immigrant women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

Norwegian Feminist Wants More Muslim Immigration

Gry Larsen, the leader of the Youth Organization of the Norwegian Labor Party, wants a more open immigration policy, with less restrictions on asylum seekers than we have now. She is worried that the Center-Right government is copying too much of the restrictive immigration policies of Denmark. She claims that according to a new EU study, Swedes are less negative towards immigrants than Danes. The Danish line thus fosters xenophobia, while the softer Swedish way leads to integration and tolerance.

The report she is quoting is from the Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). It has been heavily criticized in Denmark. To give you some measure of how serious this organization is, it should be mentioned that the EUMC suppressed a report on anti-semitism in Europe because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined. For my own part, I would say that Denmark has a lot healthier approach to this than Sweden does. The Danes actually talk about their problems. Sweden is breaking apart while everybody is pretending they live in a happy, multicultural society. Which approach is better in the long run?

I also find it remarkable that an ardent feminist and young woman such as Gry Larsen is blind to the fact that she opens the doors to even more Muslim immigration, while her young countrywomen are increasingly unsafe for rapes by Muslims in their own capital.

Norway will shut companies that refuse to recruit at least 40 percent women to their boards by 2007 under an unprecedented equality drive, a cabinet minister said on Tuesday. "Companies have been dragging their feet. They really have to recruit more women," Children and Family Affairs Minister Laila Daavoey told Reuters. "In the very worst case, they will face closure." Norway's parliament told firms in 2002 to ensure at least 40 percent of each sex in boardrooms by mid-2005 to force corporate leadership to match Nordic traditions of sex equality elsewhere in society. Daavoey, who oversees sex equality rules, said that all state-controlled firms including oil group Statoil and telecoms firm Telenor had already complied. "If we can recruit women to our state companies why can't private businesses do it too?" Daavoey said.

Sweden’s left-wing parties showed some signs of dismay on Sunday, when a group of women politicians announced they were founding a new feminist party and planned to run in next year’s parliamentary election. After months of speculations and rumors about a women’s party, Sweden’s leading feminist, former Left Party chairwoman Gudrun Schyman, said she had allied herself with university scholars Ebba Witt-Brattström and Tiina Rosenberg to put debate on the patriarchy back on the political agenda. ‘We will challenge the power order between the sexes,’ spokeswoman Sofia Karlsson told reporters at the Feminist Initiative’s press conference. ‘Of course there are some feminists in the old parties, but you can’t tell from the policy they run.’ In most other countries, a feminist party would not be considered a serious threat to the already established political parties. In Sweden, however, recent opinion polls have shown that 20 percent of all voters would consider giving their vote to a women’s party if it existed. Sweden’s governing party, PM Göran Persson’s Social Democratic Party, immediately lashed out against the newcomers and said that he feared they would contribute to the demise of Sweden’s left-wing government. Despite Sweden being among the world’s most egalitarian countries, feminists say there are still many areas where women meet discrimination.

Gudrun Schyman’s Feminist Initiative would win seven percent of votes if an election were held today, a new opinion poll has shown. The Temo poll shows that Schyman is winning support from Green and Left Party supporters, meaning that both parties risk disappearing from Sweden’s parliament. This could help the right-wing coalition into power, an expert on Swedish politics has told The Local.

Scientists at NASA and the University of Kansas say that a mass extinction on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago could have been triggered by a star explosion called a gamma-ray burst. The scientists do not have direct evidence that such a burst activated the ancient extinction. The strength of their work is their atmospheric modeling. The scientists calculated that gamma-ray radiation from a relatively nearby star explosion, hitting the Earth for only ten seconds, could deplete up to half of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. Recovery could take at least five years. With the ozone layer damaged, ultraviolet radiation from the Sun could kill much of the life on land and near the surface of oceans. "A gamma-ray burst originating within 6,000 light years from Earth would have a devastating effect on life.""We don't know exactly when one came, but we're rather sure it did come - and left its mark." Thomas says that a gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction 450 million years ago, killing 60 percent of all marine invertebrates. Life was largely confined to the sea, although there is evidence of primitive land plants during this period.

"A study by researchers at the University of Waterloo indicates that Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began on the planet. The new study indicates that up to 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favourable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Denmark: No More Immigrants, Major Towns Demand

Schools in larger cities’ disadvantaged neighbourhoods say they are pressed to their limits by the flow of young immigrants and refugees, who move there from smaller towns and rural areas. Politicians from the cities of Odense, Århus, Vejle, and Kolding have called for the flow to be halted, if efforts to integrate the newcomers are not to be thwarted. Vejle Mayor Flemming Christensen cited examples of school districts in Odense and Copenhagen, where families have transferred their children to private schools or public schools in other neighbourhoods, because of the predominance of immigrants and refugees. In recent years, Danish authorities have placed new refugees in smaller cities and and towns instead of the big cities as a way to evenly distribute them throughout the country. Integration laws demand that refugees must live in their assigned residence for at least three years. After that, however, they are free to live where they choose, and they tend to move to larger cities in search of better job opportunities and larger immigrant communities. A significant number of the newcomers are schoolchildren under 18 years of age, who require a large amount of resources from the cities’ school districts.

Local authorities in four Danish cities have called for a halt to immigration in the Danish cities as these are not able to integrate more immigrants. The local authorities are currently struggling to cope with the influx of immigrants, who are often poorly integrated into Danish society. This morning, local authorities in the cities of Århus, Odense, Kolding and Vejle said that their pain threshold had been reached and called for a ban on immigration in the major cities.

The remaining Danish children have been removed from the Nordgårdsskolen in Aarhus, which has now become the first school in Denmark to have no ethnic Danish school children. The Liberal school spokesman in the Aarhus region said that he preferred to have one public school dominated by immigrants to having a number of private Muslim schools.

City police are concerned about the rising incidence of immigrant teens wielding knives - and using them. Children of immigrant families are dominating the capital city crime scene like never before, representing an increasing segment of arrests for violent crime, even as crime rates for their Danish-born peers are on the decline. "The situation is extremely alarming. We've been aware of the trend for a while now, but things are moving in the wrong direction entirely," said Copenhagen Police inspector Per Larsen.

The cousins Hizir and Ferhat Kilic were 16 and 17 years old when they assaulted and stabbed a young Italian traveller, Antonio Currà, and left him to die on the street. The court sentenced them to 10 and 8 years in prison for the murder, and to be deported to the country of their birth, Turkey. 'The deportation is ten times worse than the prison sentence,' Hizir Kilic told the court last week. 'I won't be able to go to Turkey and survive.'

An imam has infuriated the nation during a Friday prayer session by insisting that Muslim girls should cover themselves from head to toe. Muslim girls should cover themselves from head to toe, and neither wear perfume nor go to the hairdressers if they want to have any chance of going to heaven. The Islamic Religious Community taped the sermon and took it upon itself to distribute it to schoolgirls in Muslim private schools, so that they and their parents could follow Hleihel’s instructions.

Alarmed at last week's police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

A new book claims that Islamists masquerading as moderates have insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American society, to the nation’s extreme peril. The book by Paul Sperry, a journalist, is called ‘Infiltration: how Muslim spies and subversives have penetrated Washington’. According to its promotional literature, “While Americans continue to promote cultural diversity and religious tolerance as society’s highest values, radical Muslims masquerading as ‘moderates’ have insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American society, to the nation’s extreme peril.” The book claims to reveal “how Islamic extremists, taking advantage of Americans’ blind trust, have been covertly working to destroy America’s constitutional government and the Judeo-Christian ethics on which the nation was built.” Those held responsible for the alleged Muslim “infiltration” of Washington are “the politically correct media, government, and citizens, who don’t fully understand the dangers of the Muslim faith.”

Friday, April 08, 2005

Responding to the shutdown and restrictions on the Islamic charities and non-profit groups in the United States, US Muslims announced the formation of the National Council of American Muslims Non-Profits in an effort to develop a comprehensive oversight mechanism ensuring transparency and protection for the Muslim institutions in the country. Since the 9-11 attacks, the United States has been putting pressures on Muslim countries to clamp down on Islamic charities under the pretext that they were channeling funds to terrorists and extremists, a charge vehemently dismissed by many charities. The charities have complained that restrictions were affecting their work to reach out to the Muslim poor and needy. In August, 2003, thousands of Palestinian orphans and destitute families took to the streets of Palestinian cities to protest freezing the bank accounts of 18 charities suspected of having links with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

The West must end "Islamophobia" and Muslim nations must tackle the causes of religious extremism, such as poverty, to win the fight against terrorism, the head of the world's largest body of Islamic nations said on Friday. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the war on terrorism could not be won by military might alone. "It is not justifiable to associate terrorism with any particular race or religion," he said. "Islam and Muslim countries should not be made accountable for them." Abdullah said for the world to defeat extremism and terrorism it must first understand the causes of terrorism, singling out poverty as a major threat to global security.

The Somali man stabbed several people in a tram in Oslo, killing one. Now, he does not get jail, and may even receive compensation for the way he was treated at the hospital:

A Norwegian-Somalian who went amok on an Oslo tram last August, killing one and injuring five with a combat knife, has been assessed as psychotic and cannot serve prison time. Forensic psychiatrists say the 41-year-old man was psychotic when the crimes were committed and is still psychotic and recommend he receive treatment for at least five years. He stands charged with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder. The 41-year-old was seated in the front of the tram and suddenly stood up and began methodically stabbing passengers. The driver stopped and opened the doors to help people escape and the assailant ran off. The man was a known 'ticking bomb'. He had been released from the psychiatric polyclinic at Ullevål University Hospital four days before the tram attack. Bache-Wiig is still considering suing Ullevål for compensation for the way her client was treated.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

‘Apathetic’ children refused Swedish residency

I know this may sound like a joke, but I assure you it's not. Apparently, some asylum seekers in Sweden are suffering from a mysterious illness, that can only be cured by getting permanent residency in Sweden:

Against the backdrop of an emotionally charged debate, Swedish Parliament on Wednesday voted against granting permanent residency to a number of ‘apathetic’ asylum-seeking children, putting Sweden’s humanitarian image into question. The fate of around 150 asylum-seeking children hung in the balance on Wednesday morning. Outside Swedish Parliament, representatives from Save the Children were handing out leaflets pleading with politicians to give them a second chance in life. As reported in Wednesday’s Svenska Dagbladet, some of the children are affected by symptoms of depression and the proposal recommended they should be assessed by a special expert group of child doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. MP’s voted 124 to 171 against the proposal.

“I want a Sweden which doesn’t throw out sick children,” said Folkpartiet's Mauricio Rojas. Standing at the helm of the debate, Migration minister Barbro Holmberg said giving special treatment could increase the risk for even more asylum children to become apathetic. “That risk I am not prepared to take,” she told Aftonbladet. Enraged by Holmberg’s comments, Green Party MP Gustav Fridolin said he considered it almost racist to suggest that asylum families would manipulate their children in order to obtain permanent residency in Sweden.

The Swedish archbishop has joined the sharp wave of criticism against the Swedish parliament’s decision not to give blanket amnesty to the 600 refugee children – paralyzed by depression and no longer eating or drinking. Some Swedish newspaper editorial writers are very critical of the statement from the minister in charge of immigration who claims that some of the children said to be too depressed to eat or drink really get out of their beds in the evenings and run around in good health. The editorials maintain that statements like this feed anti-immigrant feelings in Sweden.

I have no doubt that the tensions created by the murder of Theo van Gogh have fueled anger, which in some cases could be channeled to extreme right-wing organizations. But I get suspicious when the authorities claim that Dutch teens are more dangerous than Islamic terrorism. Sounds rather unlikely to me:

Police and the national security service AIVD are to investigate extreme-right youths who wear Lonsdale clothing as concerns rise over the radicalisation of Dutch youth. The youths — who are distinguished by wearing the clothing brand Lonsdale and are openly opposed to immigrants — are said to be sparking street disturbances. After police raised the alarm over the speed of radicalisation of young native-Dutch people, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner announced the Cabinet has ordered an investigation to determine how dangerous these groups are. The RID, a regional police intelligence unit, recently claimed the radicalisation of a hardcore of Dutch teens potentially poses a threat more dangerous than Islamic terrorism. In the latest incident, teens dressed in Lonsdale clothing were involved in a massive violent confrontation with Turkish immigrants in Venray. It began when windows of a local mosque were smashed. Interior Minister Johan Remkes has informed Waals that Saturday's riot was not an isolated incident, but was instead a national phenomenon in which right-wing extremists are gaining more influence in the Netherlands.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

I knew these expulsion rumors were too good to be true. Krekar has been allowed to stay "for a while" a few years now:

The Norwegian Parliament (Storting) on Tuesday rejected a proposal from the right wing Progress Party (FrP) to expel Mullah Krekar immediately. Only 20 voted in favour of the proposal, according to NRK. FrP leader Carl I.Hagen referred to the decision by the Immigration Directorate to expel Krekar, and said that in his opinion the Storting ought to have followed up the matter. Hagen saw no weighty reason why Krekar should remain in Norway. Iraqi authorities have said that he will not face a death sentence should he return home. However, a majority was of the opinion that a parliamentary decision to expel Krekar would be contrary to the division of power between the Storting and the Government. - When the Immgration Directorate has made a decision to expel, it is up to the Department of Municipal Affairs to execute this, said Magnhild Meltveit Kleppa, head of the parliamentary Local Government Committe.

Help wanted: Vikings. Must be friendly, tourist-oriented and interested in ancient Norse traditions. Crazed, bloodthirsty pillagers need not apply. In a rare employment opportunity for Vikings, whose job market peaked about 1,000 years ago when they terrorized Europe in their longboats, southern Norway's Vestfold county wants to fill slots at its local historical park. The ad, to appear in local media Saturday, will be simple: "Jobs available. Vikings in Vestfold," with a link to the center's Internet home page, said Lars Kobro, self-described chieftain of the Midgard Historical Center. "More and more we see that tourists are interested in Vikings," Kobro said Tuesday. "They don't want just exhibits, but face-to-face encounters. But the center is seeking to play down the Scandinavian Vikings' reputation as wild, murderous looters who pillaged and burned through much of Europe, a claim Kobro said was largely exaggerated in texts left by ancient English monks. "They were really more traders and merchants," said Kobro. He said they are seeking a corps of about 50 part-time Vikings, ready to turn out at the center when needed.